Find­ing graphic echoes

Look out for clear graphic forms that re­peat each other, but as sep­a­rate sub­jects

An­other way in which el­e­ments can co­in­cide in an im­age is in what I call a ‘graphic echo’. This is usu­ally ei­ther by shape or by colour, and some­times, as in this case, by both. There are no hard and fast rules for this kind of cor­re­spon­dence, but if you at­tune your eye to spot them, con­sciously look for them, you may be sur­prised by how of­ten they ap­pear. In ei­ther case, it helps if they are clear and sim­ple. So, shapes that are dis­tinc­tive and recog­nis­able tend to do well, such as a tri­an­gle (al­though, in fact, tri­an­gles tend to be so com­mon that their co­in­ci­dence value isn’t that high). Colours that echo one an­other are, on the whole, eas­ier to spot, but mak­ing a co­in­ci­dence de­pends on them stand­ing out from their sur­round­ings, such as when they are the only bright patches of colour in an oth­er­wise drab set­ting. Here, both shape and colour re­in­force each other. An es­tab­lished fea­ture of this Caribbean Colom­bian city are fruit sell­ers from the nearby town of Palenque, and they are known best for sell­ing wa­ter­mel­ons. Here, one is sliced open to show its rich red colour, and the curv­ing yel­low line just in­side the skin is echoed in the curv­ing yel­low frill on the seller’s dress.

The red cres­cent bor­dered with pale yel­low of a cut slice of wa­ter­melon is echoed in the dress of the woman sell­ing fruit in Carta­gena, Colom­bia